Anthony Parra had spent much of high school enduring quarantines and social distancing. When he graduated in 2022, he wasn’t sure what to do next.
He knew he liked working on cars—taking things apart, figuring out how they worked, putting them back together better than he found them.
But he hadn’t figured out how to translate what he loved to do, and what he was good at, into something tangible. Not yet.
After high school, Parra enrolled in general education courses at Germanna, where he took online classes for a year. But he didn’t feel any closer to knowing what he wanted to do with his life.
“I told my mom I didn’t know if I wanted to go again and do the same thing,” he recalled.
It was she who suggested he talk to a Germanna workforce advisor. Maybe, Lorena Parra thought, her son would find his footing in a trade.
Parra wasn’t convinced. But he agreed to a conversation.
It would change the course of his life.
‘I didn’t know where to start’
Parra had not been entirely suited for a traditional high school classroom, although he had done well enough.
But it wasn’t until he began shop class halfway through his sophomore year that Parra found an environment where he could thrive. He learned to safely use power tools, to cut boards with precision, to weld.
It was the same feeling he got from tinkering on cars.
But something was about to throw a wrench in his high school career in a big way.
In March 2020, schools and just about every other public space shuttered. A temporary lockdown to slow the spread and flatten the curve of COVID-19.
“A week turned into two weeks, two weeks turned into a month, a month turned into a year,” Anthony recalled.
There would be no more shop class, no sitting side-by-side with classmates, no working with his hands. School was relegated to virtual learning.
Parra saw his grades slip. He felt himself falling behind. Stuck indoors in isolation, he imagined he was the only student who was floundering.
He wasn’t, of course.
His mother recalls how her son didn’t recognize the student he was becoming. “He said, ‘Mom, this is not me.’ He was discouraged. His self-esteem was really down.”
When schools finally reconvened, masks obscured familiar faces and social distancing kept everyone at arm’s length.
“I was just over it,” Parra said. Over classrooms and computer screens and desks that kept him stuck in one place.
“I didn’t know what I wanted to be. I didn’t know where to start. I was working with my dad, who does concrete work. It’s hard work. It took a toll on his body. He didn’t want me to do that for the rest of my life. He told me to find something I enjoy.”
Now, a year into college, he still wasn’t sure what that was. He found himself at a crossroads.
The traditional path was so well-traveled he nearly hadn’t seen that the road diverged.
Finding the right path
By the time he entered high school, Parra’s mother, Lorena, had worked for years as a certified nursing assistant. All the while, she’d longed to return to school. Years passed. There never seemed to be a right time. She was raising four children and working full-time and maintaining a home with her husband.
But she’d finally done it. In 2019, she became a licensed practical nurse.
Parra was watching. Watching his mother balance all the demands of a working mother and a full-time student. She’d pushed through when it would have been easier not to.
Inspired by her example, he agreed to go with her to Germanna when his mother suggested they explore what else was offered. They discovered a wall of pamphlets on the college’s workforce and credentialing programs.
They studied the options: plumbing; electrical; carpentry; heavy equipment operation; Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration. And they asked to meet with Leslie Conway, Germanna’s workforce advisor.
“She was taking her lunch when we walked in,” Lorena Parra recalled. “I apologized. She said, ‘No, no, no. I’m here for you guys.’ She put her lunch to the side and took her time to sit with my son. I explained that he had no idea what he wanted to do. She said, ‘That’s OK. It’s OK if you don’t know.’ That’s what made him comfortable. She took her time to explain that there was something for him.”
Parra walked in not knowing if he wanted to continue at Germanna. When he walked out, he was signed up for the first of four levels of HVACR.
“I was open-minded. I was going to give it a try,” Parra said. “When I finished the first level, I signed up for the next one and the next one until I reached level four.”
Each course, and each instructor, gave him the confidence to keep going. Perhaps best of all, he received the kind of hands-on instruction he thrived on.
In two years, Parra learned a trade—and landed a job soon after. He has found in his work the same supportive environment he found at Germanna.
“My son was in a position that many kids can be in when they finish school and don’t know what they are going to do,” Lorena Parra said. “Now, he is excited. He does something he enjoys. He takes videos of the work he’s doing, and he comes in and shows us. That makes me very happy.”
That wasn’t the end of the Parra family’s Germanna story. The college would soon open another door for Lorena.